The Coagulated Moon

A Discussion Over Toast & Coffee with Jacques Prévert on the Necessity of Rib Cages

oh, I have a piece in Thistle’s first lovely issue. 

http://issuu.com/thistlemag/docs/issuenumber1

i.

We extracted a season through a sieve and drank its pulp from a white-flowered gourd
The pine needles prickling the roofs of our mouths
Fluttering with each yawn
From the pile of dried needles & honey paste we built an echo to wear around our heads
Laughing as an egret pecked at our scalps, mistaking our daisy-chain circlets as twigs for its nest
In its throat you felt a siren whimpering in nine minute intervals

ii.

You pierce the yolk and ask if it reminds me of anything, of a bird, of evergreens
The maddening burner drawing rings around iron
You talk about your childhood
How your mother carved dreams out of clay and placed them on your nightstand
But the teakettle is hissing, until your voice & the buzzing coalesce
The steam softens our adobe hands & dribbles onto the kitchen tiles
An egret collects the remnants from the floor for its nest
“I remember now”, I say, “I remember" 

Cracked Carapaces Like An Eggshell

“Above!”, They cried out

Their fingers like a pistol pointing at the puling punctured sun

Only to curl inward into a fist from guilt

As if a thought could fell the light

The fishermen, unmoved, cracked carapaces like eggshells against the rocks

Their teeth extracting the sinewy muscle from the shells

Their rotund laughter squelching against the moss

The oars whisking the marigold sea

The waves wheezing with each blow

“Look! Look!”, Cried the boys

The brigand cormorants nibbling at the pulpy sun

Its mauve skin swelling, scudding across the bog

The fishermen raised their rifles and shot

Though too late

It’s always too late

The boys sat and listened to the labored breath of the sun

While the fishermen, unmoved, cracked carapaces like eggshells against the rocks

After the War

I.

After the murmurous machinery of the thrum-eyed flowers had ceased
After their honeyed gears and levers had wrung out each note and chord from the towns
After the raid
After the benumbed boys, with their nets & their eagerness, left with carafes full of chirping & chattering (of which they drank with such merriment!)
After the wind had been kneaded & threaded into cravats which the boys wore about their necks
After the townsmen had been found with syllables stiched to the innards of their ties
After the firing squad
After the seashell sirens had been silenced

II.

Before their breaths begat brumous boys which budded in the concrete canyons
Before the susurrus stems had flowered in their stomachs
Before their bellies had burst and drizzled sounds unto the streets
Before evening ebbed endlessly from which it’s yet to return
Before the churchyard children drew their branch stick guns
There was laughter
There was laughter and we were happy & free

Driveled Light From the Mouth of the Sun

There are excavators who strip the bark from trees
In weary sunlight which dims dimmer
In bruised sunlight swollen shut
“Quiet down,” They say
And they do
The insects curl into the coils of lightbulbs
Only to be awakened by the rattling of their glass enclosure
Their entrails dressed in soot and light
As their bodies drivel dawn onto the sky
The excavators restless still
Watch wayworn worms entomb themselves in resin
At this sight they too resign
“Another day,” They say
“Another day" 

Plucked an afterthought in dribs and drabs

When my father died I inherited an afterthought
I kept it perched on the mantle
Enclosed in its brass panopticon
Until age had fused the shell and its contents
Which I spent evenings trying to extract
But my hands had become to dull to hammer anything asunder
Now I have an attic full of afterthoughts
Waiting for you to crack them open

12 January 2011, 9:38 a.m.

I bit into your half-eaten mumbles this morning
You’d left them in the kitchen counter
Amongst the apples and the brooding bruised pears
When I realized what I had done I laughed
You laughed too
The cottage laughed and shook
In the final drips of our stuttering laughter
I looked over to see you cutting newspaper clippings
Of love more tender than our own
I kissed your forehead, opened the door, and shut it behind me

Argus Shell & Argus-Eyed; Les Poumons De La Mer

Mother, I watched the wilting wind gnaw at your sandcastle hands, while the sea’s sickly arms crashed against your limbs and seized them grain by grain. The wave’s spatulate fingers sculpted cliffs from your chest where I stood. Perhaps that’s why I’m fearful of heights. There are days when I hide in seashells and let the tide draw me in. I listen carefully for any remnants of you. Perhaps your laughter’s too sharp that it punctured tunnels in the seabed. I listen and wait, but the ocean boasts of its accomplishments. It’s captured heartbeats in its lungs, found them malleable, and spit them out as fleshy gilled creatures. Fishermen cast their nets, perhaps we’ll be caught by the same somber fate. 
-
Mother, I found your argus-shell eyes strung on the clothesline, weatherbeaten and pockmarked. You always said, “Don’t stare at the sallow sun, for it’ll draw its nourishment from your eyes."   I should have listened - You should have listened. 

-
Mother who struck love down for what it had done to her, but mostly for what it hadn’t. 
Mother who warned of honesty in inkwells. 
Mother who said be watchful of rooks who turn cups into wishing wells.
Though I never listened. 
I think of you often, wherever you may be. 

Osculating Wildly

Silence is edible

In the absence of etiquette

Conversations that rot the gums

Etch canyons in the echoes of sleep

“Hello”

“How have you been?”

-

Distance is audible

When pressed against skin

Boys besotted by impracticalities

Besought continents to be made whole again

“Hello”

“I miss you”

-

Girls osculate wildly wanting words

Without concern

Without remorse

It’s Light Which Fears Where It Cannot Tread

It’s light which fears where it cannot tread

Where wild wan women with their dandelion lips, shed silently into the crevices of the night. Where beggars who befriend the wind, scrape grit & soot from cobblestones, raking for the light’s florets. For the women have plucked the petals from the moon and left it bare. Their twitterpated featherheaded fingers flowering into rosaries for bon vivants to consume. When they’ve had their fill and daybreak drenches them in despair, they’ll laugh a boisterous laugh that shakes loose their sordid skin. Morning culls peasant boys to sweep the night’s affairs. Though boys have been known to pickpocket and brag. They’ll tuck a whisper in a match and light it in delight as the smoke unfurls the evening’s moan of twopence tales of lustful thrills. Though meddlesome mothers have been known to be nosy. (O and what a nose so grand) They’ll blow a brumal breath into a match and wait in delight, for gossipers must be hushed if mothers are to put bread on the table.